Ok, wow, I have a ton of stories to tell and just haven't had enough time this week to sit down and tell them all. So, for those of you who wish for more frequent posting, perhaps you should pace yourself on this post and make it last for several days.

A Brief Poor-Me
*A poem upon the events of Tuesday morning, April 29, 6:30 am*

The rain came down
All over town
Going for a swim
Light still dim
Cup o' orange juice
Flip flops loose
Next thing I knew
Lying askew
Bottom of the stair
Soaked, unaware
Now, neck's sore
Poor, poor, poor
Me.


The Hoop- Walk-a-thon

I didn't say much about it on here last year, but one big fundraiser here at school has been a Hoop-a-thon: shooting baskets for pledges--that sort of thing. I don't know how it has been in the past, but last year we found it very frustrating--the kids weren't into it, it took away from classtime, and was the subjects of plenty of complaints by students and teachers alike.

So this year a committee of teachers and administators got together and reorganized the whole thing. Behold, the Walk-a-thon. On the surface, it may not seem that there's much of a difference betweena Hoop-a-thon and a Walk-a-thon, but oh, there is. Rather than having whole classes pitted against eachother in competitions, instead the students organized themselves into teams of ten. They named themselves, created team t-shirts and team cheers, and--best of all--chose their own themes for Spirit Week dress-up days.

This is where things got fun. Other times that we have had dress-up days, as you've seen, they were relatively boring themes, like Blue-and-White Day, holiday themed days, pajama day, wacky-tacky day and so on. When you're trying to get participation from 170 kids, you have to be very general. But with each team of ten, the categories became much more creative. Witness: Medieval Day: princes, knights, princesses, even a jester. Paranoid Day: bring your gas masks, antibacterial wipes, helmets, white gloves, and anti-alien headgear. Grandma Day: featuring work-out grandma, biker grandma, hip grandma (boom-box, Converse shoes), gold-digger grandma (heels, gold jewelry, leapord print blouse), and couch-potato grandma.

My personal favorite, though, was my own sister's little group of ninth-graders. They staged an elaborate, day-long funeral, complete with coffin, dearly-departed corpse, somber preacher, and mourners--dressed in black with tissues and mascara trailing down their cheeks.

Granted, all these festivities DID still take away from class time. But the morale was so much better and everyone was having so much fun that even the party-pooper teachers like me didn't mind too much. And then last Friday was the actual Walk-a-thon, down on the track. In the middle of all that rain, we had a day of sun, more or less, and lots and lots of walking. (But not by me. Yet another perq of being a teacher.) A couple of kids walked (or ran) over a hundred laps. That's 20 freaking miles. Wow.


Sweeney Trace: The Demon Cat of Weirich Street

*Warning: Individuals with weak stomachs, please stop reading now.* I was recently told that this is a story that "should just not be shared," but I'm counting on the fact that you, my discerning readers, will want to hear the utter truth, no matter how unpleasant.

The other night, I Netflixed Sweeney Todd, which was very good, but as I'm sure you know, rather bloody and gross. (Sidenote: I never knew that that song, "Not While I'm Around," was from that movie--it doesn't sound quite so sweet and comforting anymore.) So, after finishing the movie, I felt a little sick, so I decided to make myself some tea and grade some papers before bed. But first, I had to go next door and feed my landlord's cat. She's been out of town and asked me to take care of old Trace, her big, gray grandpa-kitty, while she was gone. So I padded over to her house in my pink slippers, let the cat in, filled the dish, changed the water, and headed back towards the door--all in the semi-darkness of late twilight....when I felt something stuck to the bottom of my slipper. Out of habit, I reached down to brush it off and my hand encountered something sticky and soft. Oh. Dear.

The rest of the scene enfolds like something from a horror movie. With trepidation, I hop on my one clean slipper to the nearest light switch and look down to find my hand covered in black goo with little flecks of...is that fur? The bottom of my pink slipper is caked in even larger and more lumpy globs of what I can't yet bear to identify. The camera angle widens to take in the hardwood floor, a glistening dark gray mass, and another, and another. The largest one trails a stream of dried blood. Our heroine's eyes widen and widen; she inhales in a gasp and, as the camera wheels overhead, lets out a bloodcurdling scream....

Ok, so I didn't scream. I'm not really the screaming kind. Instead, I laughed--that kind of disbelieving am-I-really-holding-yarked-up-rodent-remains-in-my-bare-hands laugh. The laugh of the damned.

And then I set about cleaning it up. I scooped it with paper towels; I scrubbed it with a stiff brush; I wiped it with wet cloths. I laughed some more. I lived to tell the tale.


Some comments regarding Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica

*Spoiler warning up through Season 3)

I finished Season 3 of BG, and I was pleased to see that the show seems to still be grappling with some of the same issues that have made it a reputable work of science fiction--in particular, issues of religious faith and it's meaning in a modern world, the question of what it means to be human, the definition of "just war," rationalizations for genocide, the limits of a president's powers during wartime, and many others.

I loved the episode where the humans realize they have the power to completely wipe out the Cylons (by infecting them all with a virus that they have no immunity for), and the question becomes, "Is this genocide?" If you've created sentient life, do you wield the power of life and death over it? Or, to make an obvious comparison: did Dr. Frankenstein have the right to kill his monster?

And here's a question that I've been wondering for awhile: what is the big frakkin' deal about the half-human, half-Cylon baby? (or are there technically two now?) It seems to me that the distinguishing characteristics of a Cylon are 1) that they're programmed and 2) that their consciousness is stored outside their individual body(s); so how can a child born by natural conception be half-Cylon? I think it would have to be just plain human--created with the same genetic material as a Cylon, yes, but in no way machine. It isn't programmed, and if it dies, it dies. So for Laura Roslin to say that Hera is "the shape of things to come," as if they're creating a third, distinct race, is unfounded, in my opinion.

I found the whole trial of Gaius Baltar to be quite interesting. Given his long hair and straggly beard, I almost felt like they were saying, slyly, "Here's what would have happened if Jesus had had a good lawyer." Of course, Gaius' character is Messiah on one side, Judas on the other, depending on whose perspective you pick.

As for the final unknown Cylon, please chime in, you who watch the show, and tell me who you think it is. Personally, I'd be fine with anyone except Laura Roslin. I like her way too much for her to be a Cylon. Of course, if she dies, then I'll want her to come back as a Cylon so she's not lost from the show. (Speaking of which, I have absolutely no problem with the death of Callie. I hated her character. Always whining. Annoying.)


Teen Idol

Ok, some other time I'll give you my rant about American Idol and how horrible I think it is, but for now, I'm just going to tell you about a copy-cat contest that some community organization in our area is putting on for high schoolers. A girl from our school is competing in this "Teen Idol", and I've gone to two of the last three performances. It's organized very much like the TV show: contestants perform each week, are evaluated by judges, and are eliminated one by one until the final winner is chosen. The kids that are competing are all quite good--really, there were only a few whose performances were particularly cringe-worthy. Their worst fault collectively, in my opinion, is their insistence upon choosing bubble-gum pop songs and trying to sing them like Christina Aguilera. I mean, it's one thing to have a scantily clad sixteen-year old writhing on a stage when she's four inches high on your flat-screen; it's entirely another when she's twenty feet away from you and a live audience. You want to stand up and say, "Honey, you're underage. Please." I'm happy to say that the student I know isn't among this group--her performances are much classier.

On the other hand, at least the girls are trying. They come in actual costumes or outfits that are appropriate to the songs they're singing--cocktail dresses, cute shoes, dangly earrings. The guys competing (all three of them) come dressed in the ubiquitous ragged t-shirt and jeans. Every. week. I guess I shouldn't expect any more than that--the dictates of supply and demand.

Anyway, like it's namesake, this Idol's judges are half the entertainment. Only a few of them have any expertise in music, so they mostly refrain from commenting on the performers' vocal mistakes. Also, they recognize the courage it takes for a fifteen-year-old to sing in front of a crowd, much less be judged for it by a panel, so they try to be very kind and nice and only give criticism that won't make the contestants burst into tears and run offstage. The result, though, can be somewhat amusing. You end up with comments like, "You hold the mic very well, but I'd like to see you use the stage more," and "Well, you looked like you were having a lot of fun up there--you should try to involve the audience more in the song, though." Guess they've never heard the phrase, "damned with faint praise."

Labels: battlestar galactica, poems, teaching, vermin

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008